Clash of Cultures?

The Romano-British Period in the West Midlands

Roger White, Mike Hodder, Roger White, Mike Hodder

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2018
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785709234
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The general perception of the west midlands region in the Roman period is that it was a backwater compared to the militarised frontier zone of the north, or the south of Britain where Roman culture took root early – in cities like Colchester, London and St Albans – and lingered late at cities like Cirencester and Bath with their rich, late Roman villa culture. The west midlands region captures the transition between these two areas of the 'military' north and 'civilised' south. Where it differed, and why, are important questions in understanding the regional diversity of Roman Britain. They are addressed by this volume which details the archaeology of the Roman period for each of the modern counties of the region, written by local experts who are or have been responsible for the management and exploration of their respective counties. These are placed alongside more thematic takes on elements of Roman culture, including the Roman Army, pottery, coins and religion. Lastly, an overview is taken of the important transitional period of the fifth and sixth centuries. Each paper provides both a developed review of the existing state of knowledge and understanding of the key characteristics of the subject area and details a set of research objectives for the future, immediate and long-term, that will contribute to our evolving understanding of Roman Britain. This is the third volume in a series – The Making of the West Midlands – that explores the archaeology of the English west midlands region from the Lower Palaeolithic onwards.

1

The archaeology of the Romano-British West Midlands: overview and research priorities

Roger White and Mike Hodder

Introduction

This volume is largely ordered geographically, in terms of the modern counties of the region, reflecting the origin of the data which are ultimately derived from the HERs of the respective counties. It also reflects the fact that many of the original authors, or contributors, of these papers are (or were) local authority archaeologists. Naturally, this imposes inherent biases which will be discussed below. The county papers start with Warwickshire, and proceed clockwise through Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and lastly the former county of West Midlands in the centre of the region. The remaining papers follow more thematic approaches, considering the study area as a whole. These include papers on the Roman army and the fifth and sixth centuries which bookend the work so as to provide transition to the late Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon / Early Medieval period volumes that precede and follow the period under research. The remaining papers deal with artefactual evidence, notably pottery, coins and lastly, the topic of religion. Environmental and other scientific evidence is addressed across the papers rather than as a single study. It is fair to say that, were we to do this exercise today, we would have gone about it in a very different manner, but this method at least has the merit of consistency with the other volumes in the series, allowing readers to trace issues within each county across the defined research periods.

In attempting any sort of overview at the outset of the study, an essential starting point is Simon Esmonde Cleary’s chapter in the 2011 research framework volume (Esmonde Cleary 2011) which emphasised that the evidence for the West Midlands must be considered on its own terms and in response to the nature of the region itself, highlighting resource mobilisation, tradition and innovation. In a broader context he saw resource procurement as the major characteristic of the region in the Roman era, with mineral, agricultural and human resources all being exploited, a relationship that can only be considered as fundamentally colonial. Failure to acknowledge this is to ignore the nature of the relationship between Rome and its Empire (Mattingley 2006). In this, the Roman period is, of course, different from all other periods of British history. This chapter identifies some general themes arising from the papers presented in this volume which provide an opportunity to test this model, and puts forward priorities for future work which are applicable across the region as a whole. Additionally, for ease of reference, the research priorities drawn from each paper are tabulated here (Table 1.1).

Selections and biases

As has been noted already, the premise of this volume – to look at the Roman era in a particular region of the UK (and specifically England) – sets up inevitable biases in making sense of the data. The most obvious one, the fact that data are collated and stored by modern counties, has been noted already and does pose challenges for our comprehension in that we have no means of telling whether these boundaries relate in any shape or form to those of the Roman era. Indeed, we must assume that they do not. Even though we can suggest vaguely where territorial boundaries may have lain in the Roman period, as many authors of the papers here will do, we cannot have any confidence in their accuracy. The question of how to relate data to landscape in the Roman period has been tackled on a national scale by both the Fields of Britannia project (Rippon et al. 2015) and the Rural Settlement of Roman Britain project (Smith et al. 2016) whose approaches have taken similar, and radically different, ways of organising their data. Basically, they have broken down the country into geographically and agriculturally defined units, drawing on those identified by Roberts and Wrathmell’s study of the medieval landscape of England and Wales (2000; 2002) but creating much larger units of study than was the case for the more closely defined medieval landscape project. In the case of the Fields of Britannia, nine units were determined across England (Rippon et al. 2015, 19–56), and for Rural Settlement of Roman Britain eight units, derived ultimately from Natural England’s ‘Natural Areas’, were identified (Smith et al. 2016, 15–6). When comparing our study area with these two projects, the mismatch is striking (Figure 1.1): our one region turns into three under the Fields of Britannia criteria (Upland Wales, Western Lowlands, and Northern Uplands) and three under the Rural Settlement of Roman Britain criteria (Upland Wales and the Marches, Central West, and Central Belt). Potentially, combining the two models would result in six different regions, but with considerable overlap for two of the areas: Upland Wales / Upland Wales and the Marches, and Western Lowlands and Central West. This division and diversity of landscape character is, of course, picked up by our various contributors and we highlight it here not as a criticism but merely to demonstrate that the original premise of the research frameworks’ project is predicated on modern needs rather than ancient realities and works better in some parts of England than in others.

Figure 1.1 Comparison of defined regions within England and Wales. Previous page, top: Fields of Britannia (after Rippon et al. 2015, fig. 2.11); bottom: Rural Settlement of Roman Britain (after Smith et al. 2016, fig. 1.5) and, above, English Heritage / Historic England regions (after Hurst (ed.) 2017)

Table 1.1 Collated list of research priorities for the West Midlands Region

Regional	• Where possible, tie developer-funded work into previous excavations and research, especially if the site is unpublished or inadequately published • A clear programme of environmental sampling and dating needs to be articulated and applied to all developments to investigate landscape use and change over time
Army	• Prioritise the acquisition of environmental data to map impact of army, introduction of new species and species improvement through breeding/selection, etc. • Use artefactual studies to seek economic links, technological developments and social change • Maximise the opportunity to obtain scientific dating and analysis of sediments/geochemical testing • Continuation of existing aerial photographic survey • Monitoring of Portable Antiquities Scheme data as a means of identifying new sites on land unresponsive to aerial survey • Focus on understanding later Roman army perhaps through a combination of survey technologies and approaches (e.g. geophysics, PAS data)
Warwickshire	• Continue to develop understanding of late Iron Age development and transition through the strongly developed ceramic profile of the county • Seek to develop an understanding of areas of weakness, notably rural settlement and cemetery data • Take advantage of large-scale projects to advance a broader understanding of the period across the county • Continue to focus on site-specific issues for major and minor sites as a view to better understanding of their development • Seek to add to our relatively poor understanding of the relationship between villa and non-villa countryside, perhaps through landscape characterisation • Develop understanding of broader chronological trends • Continue to explore the nature of localised identity within the county in respect of the perceived tribal spheres of influence • Continue to explore the relationship between native and incoming populations at the end of the Roman era
Worcestershire	• Enhance the coverage of the National Mapping Programme for the county to reflect the rich tradition of aerial photography over the past half century • Focus on researching alluviation of river valleys to identity buried and well-preserved deposits through technologies such a LiDAR and specialised remote sensing collated within a GIS framework • Use the approaches outlined above to carry out predictive modelling of high-quality sites with potential for scientific analysis, carried out in alliance with more conventional surface survey and controlled/supervised metal-detecting survey • Seek opportunities to develop understanding of poorly dated periods of settlement, such as the settlement shift in the second century or at the end of the Roman period • Assess the impact of Roman military on the county – is the evidence as slight as it appears to be? • Seek to enhance understanding of the transport infrastructure of the region: what was the relationship between road and river transport, for instance? • Continue to focus on developing an understanding of the nature and development of urban settlements in the county, notably Worcester and Droitwich • Explore the nature of rural settlement in relation to questions of Roman or native forms of settlement and the relationship between them • Continue to explore the nature and scale of industries in the county throughout the county in relation to technological developments • Through enhanced scientific analysis and programmes of environmental sampling, continue to explore the nature and character of agricultural production and consumption throughout the county
Herefordshire	• Seek to identify more military camps and forts and understand their chronologies better, particularly in the later first and early second century • Use an enhanced programme of aerial survey with conventional surface survey and directed metal detecting to characterise and identify settlement • Focus on further work on the iron industry with a view to understanding more about its chronology and development from the Iron Age and into the Roman period. Ariconium is the key site for this • Kenchester is clearly of key significance in the region, particular given its suspected development as a later civitas. Further research is required to characterise the site’s development and chronology, especially its later phases in relation to prestige sites in its hinterland • Seek to characterise rural settlements in the key river valleys of the region where sites within landscapes are beginning to be identified and explored
Shropshire	• Further characterisation of Wroxeter should be undertaken through a programme of geochemical testing and geophysical survey • The dating sequence at Wroxeter needs to be secured by radiocarbon dating of a statistically significant number of samples to ascertain the dates of the excavated phases and the date of abandonment • Work to characterise rural settlement away from the well-understood central Shropshire region. Key areas to prioritise include the south Shropshire hills and north Shropshire • Seek to understand in greater detail industrial aspects of Roman Shropshire, including in particular mining, quarrying and the iron industry. The ceramic building material industry also requires further characterisation through scientific analysis
Staffordshire	• Examination of the relationship between camps and forts, especially at Greensforge or Penkridge • Nature and extent of civilian settlement outside forts and how these develop into later urban settlements • Need to understand the wider landscape context of Wall so that the extensive r...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• THE MAKING OF THE WEST MIDLANDS
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1 The archaeology of the Romano-British West Midlands:overview and research priorities
• 2 Fortress, forts, and the impact of the Roman army in the West Midlands
• 3 Roman Warwickshire
• 4 Worcestershire in the Roman period
• 5 Herefordshire in Roman Britain
• 6 Shropshire in the Roman period
• 7 Staffordshire in the Roman period
• 8 Forts, farms, fields and industries:the Roman period in West Midlands county
• 9 The distribution of Roman coins in the West Midlands:a regional analysis
• 10 Joined-up thinking:reconstructing the Roman West Midlands from the ceramic evidence
• 11 Romano-British religious sites in the West Midlands region
• 12 From the Provinces to the Marches:the West Midlands in the fifth and sixth centuries